


time makes you bolder

by floweryfran



Series: a motley crew [9]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Harley Keener & Peter Parker Friendship, Harley Keener & Peter Parker are Siblings, Iron Dad, Iron dad and Spider son, IronDad and SpiderSon, Irondad, Irondad fluff, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Has Anxiety, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Peter Parker fluff, Precious Peter Parker, Protective Peter Parker, Protective Tony Stark, Spider-son, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Is a Good Bro, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, harley keener has anxiety, iron dad and spider-son, irondad and spider-son fluff, spider son, spiderson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 05:20:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20129998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floweryfran/pseuds/floweryfran
Summary: Things were good. Great, even.By all counts, Harley was—“Hey, you’re okay, honey, I promise, just keep breathing with me.”— having a panic attack in the bathroom.(Rest your weary head, poor traveler. The road will not wind for you much longer.)





	time makes you bolder

By all counts, Harley Keener was thriving. 

His grades had never been higher. If you were to look at his report card, every single class had a sexy little A+ next to it; his GPA was a startling four-point-two-five, thanks to his innumerable AP level courses and his natural propensity to test well. Harley was not the proud owner of an eidetic memory, but he was about as close to it as one could be without wearing the crown and sash. 

Exciting, too, was that Tony had started doling out a- frankly ridiculous- allowance to him, three hundred dollars of which he sent to Poppy every other week. The money was enough for her to go out with her friends (a luxury forbidden during Harley’s childhood), replace her more ratty clothes (with her new closet, she was starting to look like one of those Pinterest girls that wore all high-waisted woolen dress pants and cream turtlenecks and had hair that hung in a sleek yellow curtain down to their ass), and, most thrillingly, get a cellphone so Harley could video chat with her at her whim. Which was often. Like, too often. Four times a day often. Though Harley would never complain about it. Seeing his sister’s face and hearing about her little foray into teenage life in Rose Hill was as close to being back in Tennessee as he could get without tumbling heels-over-head down the same twisted staircase that had left him crumpled and creased like a used napkin the last time he had gone for a visit. It was good, and good enough. 

Even Natasha had told him he was “steadily improving” during their training the prior weekend. His _kicks were sharper, and some hits were landing considerable damage_. Ha! That was truly a great deal of improvement, seeing as all of his prior fighting experience came from dodging bottles and blows in his childhood kitchen as the oven spit out black steam from a burned chicken, throwing hands with the bastards that tried to pull a fast one over on his momma before he moved away, and bestowing upon Eugene Thompson the virgin mother of all dislocated jaws during the fight that had acquainted Peter and Harley all the way back in September. Harley had to hold his breath and mash his lips together to prevent the _hi wow I am in love with you_ that hovered on his tongue from slipping out unheeded after Nat had praised him. Melting before Bucky- who could be quite the love-sloven beagle when Steve was around- was one thing. But professing his undying adoration of the Black Widow while she swung nunchucks and garroted practice dummies and threw knives with her eyes closed was basically begging for an untimely, creative death. It was worlds easier to hold his tongue than it would be to recover from having his small intestine turned into a balloon animal and his large one unwound to spell out _he deserved it_ in looping cursive across the grounds of the compound. 

So, yeah. Things were good. Great, even.

By all counts, Harley was—

“Hey, you’re okay, honey, I promise, just keep breathing with me.”

— having a panic attack in the bathroom. 

“Peter isn’t due to be back for a few hours,” Pepper whispered to Tony over Harley’s head, one hand on his knees. “Should we call and ask him to come now?”

“No, no, no,” Harley chanted, reaching a tremulous hand out to grab Pepper’s. “I’m fine- I’m- _fffff_\- I’m okay, I’m okay,” he wheezed, banging his head sharply against one of the drawers of the vanity he was leaning against. “Let Peter finish his. Patrol. Saving people is more- more important.”

“Hey,” Tony said sharply, grabbing Harley’s wrists to stop him from knocking himself around any more. “None of that _this crime is worthier than thou_’s or whatever. You are equally as important as any Über-less old woman, or squirrel stuck on a rock in the middle of The Pond. That’s not- not at all debatable.” His eyes were wide, ragged. Weighted down with purple bags and a little bit frantic. 

_My fault_, Harley reminded himself. As if he had forgotten. _You’re killing them. Fix yourself and you fix them. Better hurry up_. 

A great shudder ran through him, the sharp pinching feeling in his chest reaching a new height of pain: a knife dug between his ribs and buried to the bedazzled hilt. 

He felt himself crumple forward rather than deciding to do so. He tore his hands free from Tony and Pepper’s, clapping them to his chest to try and iron out the knots in it. Even as he struggled to suck in a breath, to fill his shriveled goddamn raisin lungs, he could feel a relentless pang of regret, a dull burn that was malleable and achy and starkly different from the wild lacerations of panic. “Sorry,” he gasped, looking back up from his lap and to them, hoping to convey his guilt through his eyes. 

Yes. As well as Harley’s life was going, it did not eradicate the fact that, after baring his bleeding heart to Peter Parker some days earlier, he had been plunged into something comparable to an addict’s relapse. Nearly every moment was whiled away in that in-between space that kept him conscious but incoherent, standing but unseeing and unfeeling, alive but far from living. Flashbacks struck him with no regard for where he was or what he was doing: during his second meeting with the art club as someone taught him to sculpt with clay, making waffles on a Sunday morning with Peter, while under a car in the lab with Tony, and, of course, during the pitch colored hours of the night as his eyes and knees and very atoms implored of the universe to let him- fucking- sleep. It was a rare thing to succumb to the weight of exhaustion for longer than four hours consecutively, but it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. He missed it like a piece of himself. Phantom pains.

In fact, he worried so much about a flashback startling him violently from his sleep and subsequently waking Peter that he had taken to wandering the winding halls of the tower at night after Peter had knocked out- exhausted and heavy from patrol- rather than staying in bed, keeling over to catch some rare yet blissful hours of unconsciousness in the strangest of places. The short list he had compiled of randomest-yet-most-satisfying nap locations included: on top of the kitchen counter, balled up in the empty bathtub, cuddling with a training dummy in the gym, and wedged between the washer and dryer in the laundry room. 

“-feel that, honey?” That was Tony’s voice, cutting through the haze in Harley’s mind like a pair of kitchen shears. “That’s my heart beating under your hand. The infamous heart of The One Tony Stark. It can be a real flake sometimes but it’s here for you today. Beating almost normally and everything. What an- honor. People wish they could be so lucky as to be in your shoes. Okay, not right now, they don’t. But if you weren’t hyperventilating on the bathroom floor? Wow. You’d be- you’d be the luckiest guy on Earth, just about.” 

Harley turned his watery gaze on Tony, trying to comprehend the words underneath the low, soothing tone of his rambling. “Tony… what the _fuck_,” was what his mouth chose to say, though his brain said something closer to _keep talking; I’ll follow your voice out of this pit_ and his heart said something like _I love you, you wonderful piece of crap_.

Tony seemed to pick up the message, pressing Harley’s- admittedly, numb- hand more firmly to the spot where the arc reactor had once been imbedded. “It’s like how famous people sell their used underwear. I could sell recordings of the sound of my heart beating and call it _A Cardiac Miracle_ or something like that. Tag line could be: _every beat is a surprise; don’t stop listening or it’ll stop beating_. Sounds good, yeah? Catchy? I’m sure you and May could write something a little more creative; I’m just the tools guy but I’m doing my best here. Speaking of May, has she told you about her novel? It’s going to be a fantasy, something with a prince and some fairies, I couldn’t follow, but it sounds like a New York Times bestseller, if you ask me.” 

Harley tapped his thumb against the bones of Tony’s chest, nearly imperceptible but a steady pattern that spoke for itself: _hey, I’m back, thank you. We’re okay now, we’re good_. To Pepper, he sent a clumsy wink— one that, if she didn’t know Harley and his complete lack of ability to perform asinine party tricks (i.e. winking, whistling, rolling his tongue), she might have feared was a symptom of an oncoming stroke.

Tony gave Harley a soft smile, watching his breaths even out into something smoother but eight times more exhausted. “Hey, buddy.”

“Hey yourself,” Harley answered, slumping forward so that his forehead fell onto Pepper’s lap. He slid his hand searchingly around Tony’s chest, where it had been abandoned, in search of Tony’s hand. With a light chuckle, the man ceded and wrapped Harley’s cold, shaky fingers in his larger, callous-roughened ones. 

Pepper sighed, rifling through his waves gently, twirling them around her fingers. “That took it out of you, didn’t it, sweetheart?”

“Yeah,” Harley mumbled, his voice muffled against Pepper’s sweatpants.

“What set it off?” Tony asked bluntly, all pretense of beating around the bush abolished between them. Never did Tony think that the boy who gave him- and then talked him down from- panic attacks a half decade earlier would be sitting on the floor of his bathroom in New York, shaking the remaining tremors of one from his hands while laying across the lap of his fiancé, but there was a circularity to it that made him feel like they had no choice but to be plain to each other. It was poetic, really. Almost biblical. 

“Being alive,” Harley answered equally brusquely. 

“Ah, yes, the true impetus of all pain and struggle.”

“Don’t we know it,” Harley agreed, finally looking up, all bloodless cheeks and glossy eyes and clenched jaw. 

Tony’s heart slammed painfully against the cage of his ribs. He reached out and swiped his thumb across Harley’s cheekbone, though there were no tears to wipe away. Harley leaned into the touch like a cat into sunlight, his eyelids fluttering shut and a puff of air slipping from his loose lips.

Tony slipped his hand to cup the back of Harley’s neck, pressing his thumb into the knotted muscles and kneading them, urging them to unravel their stitches. 

_Come loose. Trace your steps backwards and unwind the tangles you made as you flailed out your wiry arms and stomped your proud feet in a reckless dance. Find the straight and narrow. Follow it to the heart of the forest. What do you find_? 

“Harley,” Tony said softly. 

He was rewarded with a glance, though it was a shoddy prize indeed, Harley’s eyes so far away as to be the thin shade of ice rather than their usual crucible of quicksilver and rich cornflower. And on the rims of them, where distance had not yet stolen him away- the journey long and winding and graciously incomplete- was something sour as lemon pith. _Guilt_. 

“You stop that right now, Harley James,” Tony nearly growled, and it was something ferocious. He pulled Harley’s head into his hands like a chalice and cradled it against the bones of his chest, pressed it there like he could absorb the bitterness in one large gulp, all smirking maw and unforgiving glare. “Don’t you sit there and blame yourself when the world is the one that turned its back on you- so long ago, and for so long- and left you to fend for yourself. For you and for a child, and, God, Harley, _you were still a fucking child_.” Tony raked a hand through his hair, leaving it mussed and wild to match the furious gleam in his eyes. “The world- the world robbed you of your childhood. And that is one of the evilest things it has ever done. You did a damn good job taking care of Poppy and yourself— the best you could’ve done. Now,” he heaved a sigh, letting some of that toxic tension flow from him in a stream, “it’s our turn,” Tony said, gesturing to Pepper with a tilt of his head. “Let us steer ship for a little while.”

(Rest your weary head, poor traveler. The road will not wind for you much longer.)

-

“It’s stupid,” Harley answered later, once Peter had flung himself through the window after patrol, mask balled into his hand and questions as to why Harley was absent from his comms for the first time since December swallowed behind the curtain of concern that Harley’s splotchy cheeks and swollen eyes wrung from every empty rod in the mansion of his mind. 

“Tell me anyway,” Peter said, whispered, reverent. Prayed. 

“No, thank you,” said Harley, all southern courtesy, and spun on his heel, setting off down the hallway in an unintentionally zig-zagged, lilted sort of way. He smacked his free hand onto the elevator button and waited, turning to shoot an apologetic glance to Peter. “Maybe some other time, Petey,” he offered, and that was how Peter knew there wasn’t supposed to be any hard feelings between them. He knew, too, that this Harley was the embarrassed and world-hating one who had been rung between unforgiving fists like a sopping towel and then left to dry stiff in the sun. Not soft, not quite. 

Maybe he needed time for his fabric to breathe, to relax. 

Maybe he needed Peter to iron out the creases for him. 

Needed, yeah. But would he want Peter to? Oh, oh, absolutely not. 

But, since Peter was still sixteen and feisty as a horny chihuahua when push came to shove, Peter stuck his tongue out at Harley and flipped him a double-fisted bird just to really get his message across.

Harley gave a very Victorian gasp and clapped a hand delicately to his chest. “Why, I _never_!” he said, as the doors began to shut between them.

Peter let them slide closed without throwing a _wait, come back_ or an _at least let someone be with you_ and immediately regretted it.

He stood still and thoughtful for a moment before regrouping his wits about him and doing what he should have in the first place. “Hey, F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Where did Harley go?”

“_Sorry, Peter_,” said the AI. “_I am under strict command from Harley to prohibit anyone from coming to find him_.”

Peter made an offended noise. “How dare! Not even I can know where he is?”

“_Harley’s command was ‘no one, but especially not Peter_.’”

“Hmph. Alright. Thanks anyway, F.R.I.,” he sniffed.

But, because May didn’t raise no pussy, he set to marching up each flight of stairs in the tower, starting in the lobby and combing through all the rooms he had access to- which was all of them, he realized suddenly and subsequently filed away in a mental filing cabinet labeled _mischief_\- with his special superpowered bullshit sensors, headass determined to find Harley of his own volition. 

“You know,” Peter grumped aloud to himself as he stomped up to the thirteenth floor, having found nothing but napping interns and overly loud businessmen on floors one through twelve. “I used to wonder how Tony managed to keep us from accidentally bumping into each other for a full week after Harley moved here. Now, I kinda get it.”

It was _thank Jesus Mary and Joseph_ floor thirteen on which Peter found Harley: an empty conference room with glass walls and an enormous, cushioned-chair-surrounded, dark mahogany table dominating it, a television screen flickering neon as it played Animal Planet on silent, and Harley, curled into an armchair _where the holy hell did he find an armchair_ in the corner beside the windows, head leaning against the pane beside him, staring out at the sharp chrome edges and soft gold glow of the buildings across the street against the cobalt night sky and clutching something in his lap. 

Peter rapped three quick knocks on the door before opening it, not giving Harley the chance to say- 

“Fuck off,” Harley mumbled.

“Nah,” said Peter, stepping further into the room. “We both know you don’t mean that.”

There was another armchair in the room, poised a few feet from Harley’s, facing towards him, as if he knew Peter would follow and wanted to accommodate for it. 

_Ha_, Peter allowed himself to think. _I knew he wanted me_. 

Something softened in his chest, mushy and nauseating and disgusting and wow he loved Harley a lot, even if the blond refused to accept the abundant cuddles and coddling Peter had saved in the empty parts of his chest just for him like Christmas presents. He sank into the chair, wiggling himself more comfortably into the stiff cushions. 

Harley was rocking back and forth minutely in his seat as if he were trying to administer his own lullaby. Peter saw that the unidentifiable object clutched in his lap was an orange bell pepper, which he was eating like an apple. 

Peter watched, one eyebrow raised. At least he learned from his mistakes: this Harley, the one that was tired of softness and concern, needed a sprinkling of sass and a whole lot of sarcasm with a side of brutal honesty to loosen the stiffness of his disposition, of his joints of his heart and spirit and the very atoms that came together to puzzle him into _him that lovely battered brilliant boy_. 

“You look batshit,” Peter said. 

“I _am_ batshit, remember?” Harley took a great crunching bite of his pepper. 

“Sounds fake.”

“Is real.”

“You can _look_ batshit without _being_ batshit,” Peter reasoned. 

“Hypothetically, yes. But I think we have learned beyond a shadow of doubt that I am most definitely batshit.”

“Stop it,” Peter said, and it was sharp with exasperation. This was not the plan. Harley was supposed to laugh and call Peter the type of dirty words that he would never repeat. He wasn’t supposed to take it _seriously_. Besides, Harley didn’t look _crazy_, just deeply tired. His hair was rumpled as if he hadn’t washed it in days, and the bags under his eyes could hold even an Avengers accommodating Costco haul worth of goods. Something in him seemed to be drooping, as if all of the kinetic energy of his being had been slurped out through a curly straw. 

He pressed his feet against Harley’s bent knees. “Stop being so mean to my brother, jeez.” He pushed a little, watching Harley keel sideways under the pressure. “No one but me is allowed to tease him. I’m gonna have to knock some sense into you if you don’t watch yourself.”

“I can take you any day of the week,” Harley said, trying hard for a smirk but landing short, somewhere in the grounds between a disgusted grimace and a look of pure anguish. He tossed the seeded stalk of the pepper onto the conference table unceremoniously, watching as it rolled in small circles, depositing some of its tiny seeds as it did. 

Peter‘s heart panged, a bit of guilt painting itself periwinkle in his chest. “I know you could,” he agreed with a nod that Harley didn’t see, too distracted by his pepper. “Absolutely. I’m frightened, shaking in my polyester panties. That potato gun of yours? Nightmare material.”

Harley’s head reeled on his neck, turning to meet Peter’s gaze. It took a long moment for his eyes to find Peter’s, brown on blue, the dry summer sky kissing the rain-soaked forest floor. “Good,” he said, still rocking slightly but wiggling his eyebrows teasingly in an effort to reassure Peter. _I’m gonna be okay. You’re here, after all_. 

Some wall fell, Peter’s souped-up fist punching straight through the brick of it, dust and concrete puffing up in a great mushroom cloud. As the air cleared, the ash settled, their gazes met. And they could see each other plainly again. “_Tell me what you need_,” Peter breathed, beseeched. Because, beneath the layers of fleece sweatshirt and shiny skin and _broken broken broken_ was his Harley, and he wanted him back like his lungs wanted air. He wanted _them_ back. 

“Distract me,” Harley murmured, numb. Pretense, shattered. Eyes fluttering shut, jaw clenching, hands bundling into fists and squeezing, releasing, squeezing, releasing. 

(Reaching for the wandering soul that he had left slip through his fingers while his eyes were shut. The soul was his, his, his, and he was voracious and cavernous without it. He wanted to slap it hard back into his chest, fit it into place like a circular peg into its hole.)

“Of course,” Peter answered immediately. “Have you- uh, have you ever read the full story of Bonnie and Clyde? Like, actually, really read it top-to-bottom? Because it’s wild from start to finish, in a dysfunctionally romantic way, and I think you’d like it.” 

Every word Peter said, Harley clung to like a life preserver. He could almost crest the rolling surface of the sea, straining for a clean breath, coming so near to relief but being tossed back like rooted seaweed and immobile plankton each time. And that was what hurt: not the pain and inability to breathe, but the knowledge that he was so close to having it, that shining thing above the surface, but he failed over and over. 

Peter waxed on for almost half an hour before Harley gasped into a semblance of conscious humanity. A breath. A whisper of a new chance. And burning his eyes- the thing that he yearned to see from under the foam of the crashing surf- hung the sun. Bright and beautiful and thoughtfully grinning as his lips formed a tale it had never told before to a pair of ears that would listen to it speak of absolutely anything with reverence so desperate that it should be creation and destruction and the whispered voice of the universe itself, singing slanted hymns under its breath. 

“So, yeah, I’m the same height as Clyde Barrow, which means being five-foot-seven is not at all embarrassing and is, in fact, uh, _terrifying_ and could make me a great driver or, less thrillingly, a murderer—“

Harley’s gaze locked back on Peter’s. On his lips, a small, bashful smile was toying. Real. Him. 

Peter felt something- some sharp, cold fear that he had swallowed down, an icicle of dread hanging from his head into the pit of his stomach- begin to melt at the tip. 

“I’m back now,” were Harley’s words. “You don’t have to keep going, as riveting as that was.”

Peter plucked himself out of his chair and stepped over to Harley’s, dropping unceremoniously onto it. Harley gave a startled squeak but shifted as Peter squished himself down between the armrest and Harley’s side, even though there was far from enough room for the two of them to share. 

Harley let out a breath. Let the warmth of Peter- that baking heat of the sun itself- warm his aching bones from the outside, in. He reached out with a curious sort of touch, unsure as his palm pressed against Peter’s, enamored but touched by a lingering wariness of being burned. 

Peter knotted their fingers together tightly, more bold and brave than polished brass, and scooped Harley’s socked feet onto his lap, turning the boy so that his head tucked beneath Peter’s chin. _This_ was warm. _This_ was real. The realest goddamn thing there was. Raw and genuine as bones and marrow pressed into each other. Like a thousand wishes, plus two. Like home and hearth and the jangle of keys and the click of the front door you’ve always known; like oatmeal for breakfast for fifteen years straight and coffee flavor resting on your tongue and a kiss of cinnamon freckling the countertop. 

Harley felt himself melt. Harley felt _himself_. 

And he began to question. To fill the new empty shelves of brain vault with something worth storing. “Do you know the largest species of penguin on Earth?”

Peter looked down, delightfully oblivious to the big bang of creation and the cradle of space held currently in Harley’s skull, his chin slipping easily from atop Harley’s curls. “It’s emperor penguins, yeah?”

“Mmhmm,” Harley verified. “Do you know the smallest?”

“That, I don’t,” Peter said, frowning slightly. “What are you thinking about?”

“_Eudyptula minor_, also called _Little Penguin_. Only grows to a foot and a half,” Harley recited. But, with a shake of his head, he realized that was not truly the important stuff. Pft. The important stuff? “What was the best sandwich you’ve ever had?” 

Peter curled his fingers into the fabric at the back of Harley’s sweatshirt. “Harls?” 

“Best sandwich you ever had is the same one you always get from Delmar’s, with all those pickles,” Harley answered for Peter, shaking his head in frustration, but it was directed at himself. “If it wasn’t the best then you wouldn’t get it every time.”

“What are you doing?” Peter asked again, something hushed and sweet in his voice. 

“Bringing all of the important stuff to the front of my brain so I can say goodbye to the unimportant stuff and pack it away in boxes and drop it off a cliff into the Dead Sea.”

“Oh,” said Peter. Then, “what’s the capital of Papua New Guinea?”

“Port Moresby,” Harley answered. “When did you meet Ned?”

“Fourth grade,” Peter said, amused. “He hacked the school server to allow all the students onto the CoolMath website and his parents were so pissed and impressed that they transferred him to the Midtown sending district for _scientifically minded children_. What is the most radioactive element on the periodic table?”

“Polonium,” Harley answered. “When did you realize you loved science?”

“Harley,” Peter protested quietly, decidedly not an idiot. “Why are all of your questions about me?”

“I’m bringing all the important stuff to the front of my brain,” he repeated as if it were obvious, finally pulling his face from Peter’s chest to meet his gaze. It was open and honest and nearly emotionless. Just existing. Just mildly curious. Just a shadow of the real Harley, but still more of him than Peter had seen in a week, so it was okay. Great, even. 

The words made something clench in Peter’s chest. “There are more important things,” he said weakly, waving a hand noncommittally. 

“Not to me,” Harley answered, and it wasn’t fierce or sweet or yearning. It was stated, matter-of-fact. 

So Peter answered. “Ben used to say I was mixing up concoctions in his nice glassware from the moment I started living with them. Baking soda and vinegar all over the kitchen. He said that was when he knew I would be in science. But me…” he trailed off with a nostalgic sort of chuckle that was all too ancient for his smooth skin and dimpled cheeks. “I knew as soon as I watched the Discovery Channel with my dad and they were mixing rows and rows of tubes with medicines, and they were sending people into orbit, and studying Mangrove forests. I knew I loved the world and wanted to- to know it, too.”

Harley let loose a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding as Peter spoke. “Nerd,” he said, but it was choked. 

Peter gave him a bashful smile, but his eyes were all full of that giddy relief he was cradling (personified by Harley’s tangled, lanky limbs in his lap).

“Hm,” Harley found himself humming subconsciously, a ghost grin quirking his lips, spurred alive by that disgustinghorrifyingnasty softness Peter always caused to melt like slime in his chest. 

“_Young bosses_,” came the mildly amused voice of F.R.I.D.A.Y. from the goddamn ceiling or whatever. “_Might I interest you in a game of questions and facts to pass the time_?”

Peter turned a blushing glance towards Harley, a silent statement. _Here are things to fill the space. I can’t fill it all myself, and I wouldn’t if I could, because you would lose you that way. This could help_? 

“Yeah, okay,” Harley mumbled. Because being with Peter was the only part that really mattered. Always. 

And that was how they ended up playing a holographic version of Trivial Pursuit circa 1986 into the early hours of the morning. 

“Come on, Pete. It’s a layup question.”

“It’s,” Peter looked at his watch. “two thirty-five in the morning. I am as dry and thirsty as the Sahara. My ass is asleep. I have never wanted a chicken tender so badly in my life. And, yes, Harley, I truly forget who the thirteenth president of the United States was. Crucify me. Toss me from high heights; expel me from our glorious land as a treasonous deserter. Call me a redcoat, a bleeding heart commie-”

“Have _mercy_.”

“_The star-spangled man... with a plan_,” Peter sang under his breath, wiggling his feet to try and bring the blood flow back to them, Harley’s weight prickling pins and needles in them long ago but refusing to admit it so as not to move him away. 

There came a knock on the door. Through the glass they saw Tony, all dressed up in his finest grey sweatpants and MIT sweatshirt, eyes bleary and hair ruffled and in his hands-

“A little birdie told me you wanted chicken tenders,” he said softly, padding into the room, balancing the plate stacked high with chicken tenders for Peter and sweet potato fries for Harley. “Well, it wasn’t a birdie. It was an artificial intelligence that I created from nothing with my own hands like a god.”

“Tony, you’re the best,” Peter sighed happily, reaching out and crunching down on a nugget.

Harley shot a soft, genuine smile to Tony, another silent message. _We love you too_.

Tony clambered onto the conference table, setting the plate down beside him, and crossed his legs, leaning toward the boys. “May I ask what we are up to in my conference room at this obscene hour?”

We. It was careful, purposeful. The three of them, together. 

“We,” said Harley, holding a hand out to grab Tony’s, “are playing 1986 Trivial Pursuit and we are going to kick your ass.”

Tony made an affronted noise, but grinned and squeezed Harley’s hand in two quick pulses. “As the only one of us who was _alive_ in 1986, I resent that statement.”

“Do you even remember 1986?” Peter quipped. “Weren’t you a sophomore then? According to what Rhodey has told us… you spent, what, 3 days of that year conscious?”

Tony squawked and cuffed them both over the head as they giggled into each other, unbearably young and sweet. “Prepare to die, you scoundrels,” he threatened, and that was how they spent the lonely hours of the night: together, and laughing, and, most of all, healing. 

(Rest your weary head, poor traveler. The road will not wind for you much longer.)

**Author's Note:**

> apparently not everything i write has to be 9k words or more??? literally whoulda' thunk.
> 
> a quick little babble about recovering and how it is overwhelmingly tire-swinging between scraping your butt against rock bottom and feeling the wind carry you on its blissful breath.
> 
> as someone who has scraped so much ass on rock bottom, i can Promise that things swing back up.
> 
> for you, for harley, for everyone.
> 
> i love you all. take care of yourselves.


End file.
